LAX05LA141 · Bailey Lowing Loadster
Bailey Lowing Loadster · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From Bakersfield International Airport (KL45) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA141
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Bailey Lowing Loadster
- Aircraft type
- Bailey LOWING LOADSTER
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N8058Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bakersfield International Airport (KL45), Bakersfield, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental airplane impacted a fence and a storage facility following a loss of engine power while on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern. The private pilot, who was the builder of the airplane, indicated he used a Volkswagen engine that he overhauled to power his airplane. According to the pilot, he wanted to break in the overhauled engine with 25 hours of operation in flight, but since the airplane was just built, he had to conduct a lot of high-speed taxi tests and takeoff and landings. Therefore, the pilot believed the engine did not receive an adequate break in. While on the airplane's fourth test flight, the pilot experienced a gradual loss of power while on downwind for the second approach. Post accident examination of the aircraft/engine by the pilot revealed scoring on the pistons, which was the only anomaly noted. The pilot was unable to test the carburetor due to damage sustained in the accident.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA141
- Event ID
- 20050422X00495
- Case number
- LAX05LA141
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a08de1c4d8ec3461358ee76764ad4b405ea9a2ecc394de0d2c9ae75c1b409570; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:08:32.903Z.